Pakistan’s military said on Tuesday they were locked in fierce street battles with Taliban fighters in the north-west, where a rights group accused both sides of killing civilians.
Military officials said government forces were advancing on several fronts towards Mingora, the Taliban-held main town in the Swat valley — once a scenic tourist hot spot but ripped apart by a two-year battle to enforce sharia law.
The blistering offensive against Islamist militants, said to threaten the sovereignty of the nuclear-armed nation, has concentrated increasingly on the valley in what the government calls a mission to “eliminate” militants.
“We had to launch a military operation because these people challenged the writ of the government. They declared democracy, Parliament, the Constitution and judiciary as un-Islamic,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said.
“We were left with no option … we will not allow a state within a state,” he told a conference of influential Islamic scholars convened to drum up support for the military operation, now bogged down into a fourth week.
Pakistan’s military said there were fierce clashes in the Taliban-held town of Matta as well as in Kanju, which is a short distance from Mingora, with four soldiers and 14 insurgents killed in the two towns.
In the last 24 hours, 16 militants were also killed, the army said.
Footage broadcast on private Pakistan television channel Geo showed armed soldiers standing outside locked shops in the main bazaar in Matta, a bastion of Maulana Fazlullah, who has led a two-year uprising to enforce Islamic law.
“Troops continue to close in on Mingora, from where Taliban are trying to escape, but our strategy is not to let them flee,” a security official said.
He said the chief objective in coming days was “to take over the Taliban’s main headquarters in Peochar”, where commandos opened a new front last week.
Intense battles were also reported in Takhta Bund, described as the main Taliban supply route.
Pakistan is under United States pressure to crush militants whom Washington has branded as the greatest terror threat to the West.
More than 1,45-million people have been displaced across the region by the fighting since May 2, however, raising alarm among humanitarian agencies.
The military says up to 15 000 troops are taking on about 4 000 well-armed fighters in Swat, where Islamabad has ordered a battle to eradicate Islamist militants who advanced to positions 100km from the Pakistani capital.
US-based Human Rights Watch blamed Taliban militants using “human shields” and Pakistan military strikes for a high loss of civilian life. — AFP